Pichulick Modern South African Jewellery Design Inspired By Travels

Pichulik is a South African jewellery label that creates jewellery for brave women. The brand was founded by Katherine-Mary Pichulik, and is inspired by the intimate relationship women have with their jewellery, and a love of travel, incorporating the influences of diverse cultures to create what can be summed up as a truly global chic aesthetic.

Handcrafted by women crafters in Cape Town where her studio is based, Katherine-Mary’s jewellery designs make a statement with their bold, eclectically colourful silhouettes that combine semi-precious stones, trade beads, metals and silken ropes. Rope, which she sources from a local rope manufacturing shop, is central to her creations, woven into dramatic chokers and layered strands and giving her designs their distinctive look. Many of the other materials Katherine-Mary works with originate from across the Africa continent.

Katherine-Mary’s love of jewellery stems from a childhood, where she would take her mother’s broken pieces, reassembling them to form her own creations. She was also inspired by her grandmother recalling how she would travel to beautiful places, and bringing back with her some amazing jewels. Katherine-Mary studied fine art in South Africa, before taking some time to travel the world visiting London, Spain and India, where like a magpie, would collect interesting objects along the way, and using the periods spent travelling on trains to weave them into jewellery pieces as way of passing time.

Katherine-Mary continued making upon her return to South Africa, creating a small collection shown to family, friends and a few retailers, but it was a collaboration with LaLesso for Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Cape Town that brought wider recognition and increased demand for her products, and establishing Pichulik as one if Africa’s leading cutting-edge jewellery brands.